Microsoft PowerToys

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Microsoft PowerToys is a set of programs provided by Microsoft for the Windows operating system. PowerToys are not integrated parts of Windows since they are released after the public release of a Windows operating system.

Currently, there are two versions of the PowerToys package - the Windows 95 version and the Windows XP one.

1 Windows 95 PowerToys
- 1.1 Windows 95 Kernel Toys
2 Windows XP PowerToys
3 External links

[edit] Windows 95 PowerToys

This was the first version of Microsoft PowerToys and included many tools for advanced users. Some of the best known ones was TweakUI - an application that is used to customize the user interface of Windows. It does accomplish this by modifying the registry. The number of "PowerToys" that was included in this package was 15 tools.

The Windows 95 Power Toys set was developed by the Microsoft Windows Shell Development Team.

[edit] Windows 95 Kernel Toys

After the huge success of the Windows 95 Power Toys, the Microsoft Windows Kernel Development Team released a set of tools for power users called Windows 95 Kernel Toys. Six tools were included in this package, including a Windows Task Manager-like application called WinTop, and a utility called Keyboard Remap, which allows the user to reassign functions to keys on the keyboard.

[edit] Windows XP PowerToys

This is the second version of the PowerToys set, and is a major change from the Windows 95 version. The tools are now included in separate downloads rather than in a single compressed executable file, and many tools that were distributed with Windows 95 PowerToys are no longer part of XP's PowerToys as some functionality of the 95 PowerToys have been incorporated into later versions of Windows, such as the ability to treat .CAB files like ordinary folders.

There are currently 14 tools that are part of Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP: